Help needed for a newbie -Tom Tom vs Garmin vs Magdellan

[grumpy44]

Really need some help choosing, never bought a sat nav before.

We need to use the unit mostly in the UK and occasionally in Europe (leisure). Additionally we have several business trips a year all over the USA including our annual homage to Florida. So top of the essential list is the best set of maps. We very rarely use a mobile so Bluetooth isn’t really an essential. As we would be using a variety of vehicles, easy mounting and portability with battery life is important. Having a good database of POI is also a selling point. We also like the text to speech functionality.

Budget of around £420 including UK and USA maps. Have been looking at the Garmin Nuvi 360, like the capabilities and size but worried about the cost of maps. Looked at the TOM TOM 910, has the maps but seems very gimmicky and worried about reliability issues plus it seem a bit bulky. Also looked at the Magdellan Roadmate 800, once again has the maps but seems old technology.

Anyway any help would be great.

[peterc10]

As far as POIs are concerned the Ov2 format used for Tom Tom is the most widely available - but most of those can be readily converted to other formats using a POI editor.

General view tends to be that Tom Tom is the most intuitive, and thereofre the easiest to pick up, but that once you get used to them that advantage is not so good.

My advice is always to find somewhere that will let you play with them and choose the one that feels best for you. No one has consistently better (or worse) mapping everywhere.
_________________
Peter
HTC Sensation
Sygic GPS for Europe (No more TT "support"!)
Copilot for USA
Bury CC9060 bluetooth car kit & Brodit mount

[grumpy44]

Take your point about trying them out, very limited options in looking at them where we live. My 3 or 4 hours surfing on the subject meant that my knowledge of these devices was greater than the men in Dixons, PC World and Maplin.

Ease of use is not really an issue as we both work in the electronics industry and are used to using complex high tech items.

One area that I have been searching the net extentively for is info. on purchasing maps for the USA. If we went for the Garmin Nuvi (still not sure which one) and wanted to get the USA maps with POI, the Garmin website states that the product is only for domestic market in the US. One UK based site had a similar product but wanted £230 approx. This would completely out price the Garmin option and we would have to go with the TT910. Am I missing something?

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